South Indian food is not spicier. It is a different grammar.
People arrive expecting the south to be a hotter version of the north and it is not. It is a different language with a different structure.
The north leans on wheat, dairy, slow-cooked gravies and the tandoor. The south leans on rice, coconut, tamarind, curry leaf, mustard seed and fermentation — which is where idli and dosa come from, and which is why breakfast in the south is one of the great meals of the world and almost entirely unknown to visitors.
Sourness is the flavour to pay attention to, not heat. Tamarind and kokum do work in the south that cream and nuts do in the north.
Practically: eat breakfast out at least twice, order the thali at lunch rather than dinner because that is when it is made, and eat with your right hand at least once because several of these dishes are designed for it and do not work properly with cutlery.
Also worth saying — "curry" is not a word anybody here uses for their own cooking. It covers about four hundred unrelated dishes and tells you nothing.
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